Housing Is Issue In County Board Race
Greens’ Reeder Challenges Favola

By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2008; VA01

Barbara A. Favola and John G. Reeder agree on the problem: It’s tough to find an affordable apartment in Arlington County. Since 2000, thousands of residences have dropped from the affordable category, they say, squeezing out many lower- and middle-income families.

Reeder, a retired foreign trade economist, has built his bid for a spot on Arlington’s County Board around this theme. “The number of affordable rental units in Arlington fell by about 13,000 between 2000 and 2008,” Reeder wrote on his campaign blog.

Government efforts to try to keep rents within reach for some — by setting aside below-market units — have fallen short of county goals, Reeder, a Green Party member, said in an interview.

“He’s right, and I concede that,” said Favola, a Democrat who joined the board in 1998. “It is a struggle to create the number of affordable units that this community really wants, because we value our diversity so much. We’d like a much more even mix of affordable housing than we have.”

In 2000, about half of Arlington rentals were affordable, as measured by federal standards, Favola said. “In 2008, it’s slightly less than 25 percent,” she said.

But although Reeder and Favola share a view of the challenge, they part ways on the solution. Reeder said he wants voters to approve a referendum proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot to create a housing authority. Favola said such a body isn’t the right fix.

The authority would be an independent government entity with a board appointed by the County Board. Today, the county’s affordable housing initiatives are run through Arlington’s Housing Division, which works with nonprofit and for-profit developers and others, Arlington officials said. Funding comes from county taxes, state and federal grants, and developers.

“There’s no guarantee that a housing authority would do any better because they are under the same constraints we are: They are facing high land costs. They’ll have to come up with the money to buy the land,” Favola said.

Moreover, the authority would not be able to offer the kinds of incentives the county does, such as allowing additional apartments when a developer commits to renting some units below the market rate, she said: “They won’t have as many tools as the county currently has.”

But Reeder, citing the example of Fairfax County, which has a housing authority, said such an entity would bring much-needed focus and efficiency to the task.

“They do larger projects. They raise more money,” Reeder said.

Favola said Arlington has created more units per capita.

An Arlington authority could also operate and manage rental units itself, something county officials cannot do. “They can’t own and operate housing for public employees, like teachers and police,” Reeder said.

A key part of Reeder’s critique comes down to cost. He argued that officials move too slowly in acquiring properties and overpay for the units they decide to get, citing Buckingham Village as an example. Reeder said the county lost a chance to save more than 450 affordable apartments, which he said would have been possible if the county had declared Buckingham Village a historic property or threatened to use eminent domain to take it over.

Instead, the county has agreed to spend more than $50 million on the project, Reeder said. That’s more than the property was appraised for in recent years, he said, and it saves only some of the units. In all, the project will build or preserve 300 affordable units.

“If the county had had a housing authority, for less money, they could have bought the whole complex,” Reeder said.

But Favola said her opponent does not understand how such transactions work.

“We negotiated as good a deal as we could negotiate,” she said. “The issue is the value of land in Arlington is high. You either have to pay it or it goes out on the market. This is an amazing thing; we’re in a free market here.”

“We’re the most sophisticated buyer you’re going to find in the county,” she added. But that “doesn’t mean we’re going to get the land at . . . a significant discount.”

Reeder has sought to hit Favola where it hurts in liberal-leaning Arlington, from the left. He said the county doesn’t do enough to promote recycling and is doing too much to promote “smart growth.” He dismissed the idea of advocating building around Metro stops as “stupid growth,” saying environmental consequences to such construction include diminished green space and increased runoff.

“The Green Party, a lot of us really appreciate having open green space,” he said. “The County Board is basically wedded to this idea that we have to have more and more density.”

More broadly, he said, the five Democrats on the County Board need some ideological diversity.

“Essentially, you have people voting the same way who listen to each other. It’s one-party rule,” Reeder said.

Favola said she and her colleagues disagree, but not on many fundamentals.

“New blood is only good if you really want the direction this person is talking about. To me, his ideas are not thoroughly thought out,” Favola said.

If reelected, she said, she will continue to work to improve the quality of life in Arlington.

“My first priority is to continue to make Arlington a pedestrian-friendly community,” she said. That means more crosswalks, more time to cross and more sidewalks, she said.

She is also pushing for “single-stream” recycling, which allows plastic, paper and other recyclables to get pitched into the same bin. And she has worked for years to increase services for seniors, she said.

“I think I’ve delivered on good, progressive government. I have been a compassionate leader,” Favola said. “I have focused on the things that are important to our heart and soul.”

As I have campaigned across Arlington this fall, I have come across the detritus of a housing boom that has burst leaving empty condos, empty lots where graceful moderate income rental apartments housed thousands of people, and bankruptcy. I am reminded that our county leaders–the Democratic county board–could have done much more to have curbed this housing madness, but went along with the mania.

Two complexes that were razed and now have empty fields overgrown with grass where about 90 modest apartments stood are the Buckingham Village complex on Henderson Road and N. George Mason Drive, and about 150 apartments at the Parkland Gardens (bounded by 21st Street & N. Glebe Road). Now we have empty fields where 500 people lived. The Buckingham site contains two rows of mostly empty, unsold million-dollar townhouses. The Parkland Gardens site is surrounded by a high wood fence that hides the foot-high grass where previously 50 years of Arlington renters lived in modest brick apartments.

Another complex, the former Concord Gardens near S. 4-Mile Run Drive and Walter Reed Drive, was converted to condominiums, nearly all of which sit empty. Condo prices are dropping like those of houses; the supply of unsold condos growing both from owners trying to sell and new projects coming on line, according to industry reports like Delta Associates, Trends in Washington Metro Area (May 9, 2008, www.deltaassociates.com).

Is this kind of “economic growth” or “development” that County Board Democrats want? They allow developrs to tear down perfectly good rental apartments standing for 50 years, and replace them with empty fields? This is not growth, but economic contraction. The well-being of Arlington residents is worse off.

Democratic County Board members always justify the heavy development in Arlington  with the unsupported claim that Arlington is using “smart growth.”   They justify demolishing small houses and small garden apartment buildings and the paving over of open space with “smart growth.”  They say Arlington should add more and more people, all of whom will be rich, and the environment will be better.  This is a bogus argument on several levels.

     First–is it “green” to demolish 50 year old houses and apartment buildings and to build much larger buildings in their place?  In other words, will this “save carbon based fuel” from being used?  For the most part, the amount of energy used to demolish, re-build, and manufacture the inputs in new structures will always be far higher than any energy saved.  Why should a 50-year old structure be torn down and not remodeled or simply equipped with modern heating, cooling and solar technology?

       The energy incorporated into constructing new buildings is enormus:  the cement industry is one of the principal energy intensive industries as are virtually all other products such as wallboard, steel.  Moreover, in  our area, virtually all the rubble from demolition goes into solid waste fill (after being trucked long distances).  Demolishing old buildings is NOT a green solution.

    New buildings and new McMansions use many more times energy than do the smaller and older houses and apartments.  A 5,000 square foot McMansion uses four times the energy to heat and cool as a small 1,300 ft2 brick colonial house.  Most McMansions do NOT come with high efficiency air conditoners and furnaces.  Affluent people in McMansions also own and use more cars as do affluent people living in apartments.  The older apartment complexes simply have no parking places and most residents are lower  income and thus have fewer vehicles per household than afflulent people.

     High rise commercial buildings, whether for offices or apartments, use very high amounts of electricity and water.  Their cooling towers generate large amounts of waste water that must be treated as sewage.  Even if near a Metro stop, more workers and more residents mean more auto traffic trips.

   Older apartments in Arlington are small, typically less than 1,000 ft2; often they have no dish washers and other energy intensive appliances.  Because new apartments are larger, they use more energy to heat and cool.   However, old apartments should be upgraded with Energy Star highly efficient appliances and windows, but this costs much much less than demolition and reconstruction.
 
    The Democrats says they are using “smart growth.”  Well the days of smart growth already occurred and Arlington has grown in population and density.  Other jurisdictins also need to grow–in particular our neighbor DC with a population of only 560,000 (less than 1 million in the 1950s).  Metro rail is already at capacity on the Orange line; do you really want another 30,000 people living in Clarendon and Va Square? Arlington is really into a phase of “stupid growth.”
 
    In my opinion, Arlington cannot grow much more without seriously injuring our environment.  The Democrats on the county board want to add another 40,000  people to Arlington, the smallest county in the entire U.S.  We already a higher density than most major cities in the U.S.   How dense should  we get? 

Arlington has about 26 square miles and now has over 202,000 residents with over 250,000 people here during the day.  The county projects 236,000 residents within  8 years, a gain of over 34,000 or 17 percent.  This means 17 percent more traffic, more sewage, more electricity used.  Is this “smart growth” or just profit driven growth that destroys the great community of Arlington?
 
    Should we eliminate all our trees?  What do we do with our sewage and storm water?  If traffic is bad now, what will it be with another 40,000?  And, only rich people will live here since the land will be so valuable that no middle class folks can own or rent here anymore.